Continued destruction of Earth's plant life places humans in jeopardy

July 14, 2015
by James Hataway

John Schramski is an associate professor in the University of Georgia College of Engineering. Credit: Peter Frey/University of Georgia

Unless humans slow the destruction of Earth's declining supply of plant life, civilization like it is now may become completely unsustainable, according to a paper published recently by University of Georgia researchers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"You can think of the Earth like a battery that has been charged very slowly over billions of years," said the study's lead author, John Schramski, an associate professor in UGA's College of Engineering. "The sun's energy is stored in plants and fossil fuels, but humans are draining energy much faster than it can be replenished."

Earth was once a barren landscape devoid of life, he explained, and it was only after billions of years that simple organisms evolved the ability to transform the sun's light into energy. This eventually led to an explosion of plant and animal life that bathed the planet with lush forests and extraordinarily diverse ecosystems.

The study's calculations are grounded in the fundamental principles of thermodynamics, a branch of physics concerned with the relationship between heat and mechanical energy. Chemical energy is stored in plants, or biomass, which is used for food and fuel, but which is also destroyed to make room for agriculture and expanding cities.

Scientists estimate that the Earth contained approximately 1,000 billion tons of carbon in living biomass 2,000 years ago. Since that time, humans have reduced that amount by almost half. It is estimated that just over 10 percent of that biomass was destroyed in just the last century.

"If we don't reverse this trend, we'll eventually reach a point where the biomass battery discharges to a level at which Earth can no longer sustain us," Schramski said.

Working with James H. Brown from the University of New Mexico, Schramski and UGA's David Gattie, an associate professor in the College of Engineering, show that the vast majority of losses come from deforestation, hastened by the advent of large-scale mechanized farming and the need to feed a rapidly growing population. As more biomass is destroyed, the planet has less stored energy, which it needs to maintain Earth's complex food webs and biogeochemical balances.

"As the planet becomes less hospitable and more people depend on fewer available energy options, their standard of living and very survival will become increasingly vulnerable to fluctuations, such as droughts, disease epidemics and social unrest," Schramski said.

If human beings do not go extinct, and biomass drops below sustainable thresholds, the population will decline drastically, and people will be forced to return to life as hunter-gatherers or simple horticulturalists, according to the paper.

"I'm not an ardent environmentalist; my training and my scientific work are rooted in thermodynamics," Schramski said. "These laws are absolute and incontrovertible; we have a limited amount of biomass energy available on the planet, and once it's exhausted, there is absolutely nothing to replace it."

Schramski and his collaborators are hopeful that recognition of the importance of biomass, elimination of its destruction and increased reliance on renewable energy will slow the steady march toward an uncertain future, but the measures required to stop that progression may have to be drastic.

"I call myself a realistic optimist," Schramski said. "I've gone through these numbers countless times looking for some kind of mitigating factor that suggests we're wrong, but I haven't found it."

More information:
Human Domination of the Biosphere: Rapid Discharge of the Earth-Space Battery Foretells the Future of Humankind, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1508353112

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18 comments

Unfortunately, none of this reasoning will penetrate the thick skulls of those who believe that there are no limits to growth. Most of those idiots seem to think that capitalism will triumph over physical law.

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Unfortunately, none of this reasoning will penetrate the thick skulls of those who believe that there are no limits to growth. Most of those idiots seem to think that capitalism will triumph over physical law.

Necessity will dictate the changes. Most every valuable lesson we learn, we have to learn the hard way. Regarding Capitalism, there's nothing in its nature that says it cannot work hand in hand with efficiency in resource utilization... in fact I'd argue it obeys the laws of Nature inherently. If something becomes more scarce, it becomes more expensive and we use less of it.

People are not their choices or actions. We are life. You are most important and so are the other life forms.

Each has it's place. Ours, at this point in time, is the most likely life form to save the life on this planet from getting wiped out by natural events. I don't see the cows making rockets any time soon, but they would be closer to evolving to that point than a tree, of humans went extinct.

Can we develop the tech to save life as we know it from assured destruction without wiping out ourselves and possibly all life (eventually due to no other life evolving before some impact or similar) while attempting the process?

Yes, we can. This can only be achieved by each person choosing to accept and love the truth in all things. Failure to accept and willfully choose the truth in all things is always the cause of evil.

Don't eat the animals unless it is REQUIRED for you to do more for life than they can. Anything less is untruthful.

I wonder what would Ted Cruz have to say on this one. That prick is part of an ignorant but also very dangerous species.

Labeling people as something they are not is equally responsible for promoting evil. Most of us have made that mistake. Do the best you can and choose better words that don't allow the evil of others to have the power over you to trick you into choosing evil too.

Now if I can remember that the next time I drive to work. It is a work in progress for us all.

Regarding Capitalism, there's nothing in its nature that says it cannot work hand in hand with efficiency in resource utilization... in fact I'd argue it obeys the laws of Nature inherently. If something becomes more scarce, it becomes more expensive and we use less of it.

Unfortunately, there are at least three kinds of situations where that doesn't work.1) The ozone hole wasn't caused by mining of stratospheric ozone, and it didn't start shrinking because stratospheric ozone became more expensive. Price signals don't take into account externalities.2) Price signals generated by humans with steep temporal discounting fail to deal with delayed feedback, especially of those affected are not yet alive to set prices.3) Increased prices may elevate a scarce resource to a status symbol and increase consumption again, and/or consumers may be rich enough to destroy the resource anyway. See tuna, shark fin soup, rhino horn, ivory.

docile

Nobody is holding it back. Remember the 200 mpg carburetor Detroit bought and were keeping from us? Ridiculous. There is way too much at stake and too many folk who looked into it for all of them to be in the game.

There is no greater threat, to plant and human life, than that being "engineered" by the AGW Cult.Just one case in point, is biofuels from food crops. What a "brilliant" idea that was and makes this argument for renewables totally absurd.

If one truly takes this to heart, then go buy a hand gun - revolvers are best as they don't jam - make a list of two or three people you believe the world would be better off without - be honest, you know at least that many - go and kill those people and then yourself. That will help reduce the numbers of humans killing off the Ecosphere. If you don't or won't, then shut up, because you do not have the courage of your convictions and are just whining.

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